In recent years, pulp, paper, and lumber producers have been taking a close look at the forests they own in mature markets in areas such as the United States and Western Europe. In many cases, the pulp, paper, and lumber producers are concluding that the wisest course is to sell off those assets. However, evolving economic realities are bringing new variables into the equation. As a result, companies that simply follow the current conventional wisdom of shedding forest real estate may be losing significant and growing sources of value and limiting their ability to build high-performance businesses over the long term.
The trend toward divesting forest assets is driven by a number of very real issues facing owners of timberland in Europe and North America. These include the rising costs of key drivers such as crop protection and mechanical harvesting, the landed price volatility of harvested timber, and environmental concerns over harvesting—all of which raise fundamental questions about the future value of forests in mature markets.
By selling off those assets, in accordance with the prior art, companies can focus on reducing the cost of fiber by sourcing from less expensive regions. Such divestment can also free up cash from what is seen as a questionable long-term investment, and make cash available for distribution to investors or for other business investments. The proceeds from such divestments can be considerable. From 2000 to 2005, for example, Georgia-Pacific and International Paper each brought in some US$4 billion from the sale of timberland as shown in FIG. 1.
The above divestment strategy is based on the traditional value streams associated with owning the forest, such as lumber, pulp and chemical by-products. However, the corresponding list may be incomplete since the list represents only one aspect of the forest's broader value. Consequently, the above divestment strategy may ignore additional streams of revenue.
There exists a need in the art for systems and methods that support additional streams of revenue from a forest in order to increase the profitability of the owner.